Fikac: Sponsor of liquor bill cites ease for families

AUSTIN — A proposal to allow liquor stores to sell whiskey on Sundays might be called a lot of things. Family-friendly might not be the first term that comes to mind.

But that's how Rep. Senfronia Thompson describes her bill to eliminate the Sunday ban on selling liquor for off-site consumption.

“I want to be able to give families an opportunity to do all their shopping on a Sunday, including distilled spirits, if they want to,” she said.

Thompson pointed out that stores can sell beer and wine on Sundays and that people can buy liquor — but with liquor, “you must drink it where you buy it.” That's where a problem can come in, she said, as it can any day of the week when people drink in restaurants or bars.

“Most individuals do not get designated drivers. However, they get behind a steering column, and they try to steer their way home,” she said. “I don't want to be — nor any member of your family to be — a target for those individuals in the effort to make it home.”

Thompson, a Houston Democrat who is carrying the proposal with Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, also put in a pitch for free enterprise.

“I don't believe that companies that don't want to be open on Sundays should force everybody else to be closed,” she said, calling the Sunday liquor sale restriction an “antiquated, outdated” vestige of a time when blue laws limited many Sunday sales.

Those who sell booze, however, don't necessarily like House Bill 421 by Thompson or the identical Senate Bill 236 by Hinojosa. Liquor interests are divided.

“Texans should be offered the convenience to purchase distilled spirits just like they purchase beer and wine,” said Alan Gray, executive director of the Licensed Beverage Distributors, representing wine and distilled spirits wholesalers. Distillers and some liquor stores also favor it, he said.

Lance Lively, executive director of the Texas Package Store Association, said his group opposes the measure. He said it would just spread six days' profits over a week and that some mom-and-pop liquor stores can't afford to be open every day.

“People will tell you it's permissive. In the real world, if your competitor's open on Sunday, you have to be open on Sunday,” Lively said. “It really hurts those smaller retailers out there.”

The Legislative Budget Board in 2011 said such a measure would bring in a net $7.4 million in taxes to the state general revenue fund over two years. It assumed some loss in mixed-drink tax revenue.

Its estimate said some people who buy liquor across the border in Mexico might shift their business to Texas on Sundays if they were able, but it didn't add up to any potential gain.

Some have cast doubt on the estimate. And aside from any revenue boost and family-friendly benefits touted by Thompson, some say the change would divert people from church and family.

Thompson said there's no such message: “People who are going to church are going to go to church anyway.”

Bee Moorhead of Texas IMPACT said the interfaith group doesn't have a position on the measure. But Moorhead, an elder in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), described the lingering restriction on sales as little more than a holdover of bygone days.

“It's nice to have a Sabbath. But at this point, everything is operating on a 24/7 schedule,” Moorhead said. “It's kind of artificial to pick one thing or another and say this one's not allowed to.”